Record crude oil prices in 2006 helped Nigeria to become the first African state to pay off its debt to the Paris Club of rich lenders. Although Nigeria still owed about $5 billion to the World Bank and other private-sector lenders, a write-off of $18 billion in October 2005 and a final payment of $12 billion by Nigeria in April 2006 cleared the way for greater government spending on infrastructure, education, and health. Previous windfall profits had disappeared during military rule without benefiting national development or alleviating poverty. Debt repayment formed the basis of Pres. Olusegun Obasanjo’s economic-reform plan, backed by tax reform and greater accountability. Nigeria was removed from an international credit blacklist and achieved credit ratings similar to emerging-market economies such as Turkey and Ukraine, which made the country more attractive to foreign investors.

Progress in economic performance was closely connected to the government’s anticorruption campaign, which succeeded in recovering more than $5 billion and significantly reduced Internet and international financial crime—notably the e-mail fraud scheme popularly known as “419.” The war against graft reached high up the ranks of Nigeria’s political elite and had serious implications for the general election in 2007. In September the head of the anticorruption agency announced that almost all of the 36 state governors were being investigated for corruption, with indictments being prepared against 24 of them. The governors of Oyo, Ekiti, and Anambra states were impeached. In Anambra this led to the appointment of Virginia Etiaba as Nigeria’s first woman governor. More important, the People’s Democratic Party, the majority party, suspended Vice Pres. Atiku Abubakar for three months over allegations of corruption. Although he remained in office, his suspension disqualified him from nomination as a presidential candidate in the 2007 election. Critics believed that the anticorruption war was being used by Obasanjo as a political tool against his opponents who had worked against the president’s bid for a third term of office; any official found guilty of corruption would be ineligible to stand as a candidate.

The year saw an upsurge in armed conflict in the oil-producing communities of the Niger delta spearheaded by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which demanded greater control over the region’s oil wealth. Since February, militants had carried out a wave of attacks on pipelines and other oil facilities, including kidnappings of foreign oil workers. Production was slashed by a fifth. In August, President Obasanjo ordered the military to crack down on delta militias, but this proved difficult as local militants put to great advantage their knowledge of the region’s intricate network of creeks and swamps. Violence erupted again early in October with more abductions and at least two firefights with Nigerian troops, which allegedly resulted in the death of 17 soldiers. The troops reportedly retaliated by razing a delta village. The military denied the charges, but such reprisals by government troops in the area were not without precedent.

A militant of the Ijo people guards a site on the creeks of the Niger delta area of Nigeria. Local …

George Esiri—Reuters /Landov

The sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Maccido, died on October 29 in an airplane crash near Abuja. He was the spiritual leader of Muslims in Nigeria and Niger. His younger brother, Muhammadu Saʿad Abubakar, a professional soldier, was installed as his successor. This marked a significant generational shift in Islamic leadership in northern Nigeria.

Internationally, Nigeria became a model for other African Union countries in its peaceful observance of international law. In March it arrested and repatriated Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia; Liberian officials handed him over to Sierra Leonean and UN authorities for trial on charges of war crimes. In August Nigeria ended a drawn-out borderlands conflict by ceding the disputed oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon in accordance with a 2002 International Court of Justice ruling.

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